Electric Pig

Oslo

Electric Pig — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:10:58 +0000

These are some photos I took while I was in Oslo, a few hours after the tragic bombing and shootings. I found out that I was going only an hour before the last flight was due to take off, so I didn’t have the time to pick up a camera or any clothes, so these were all taken on my iPhone. When we arrived at about midnight, we took a taxi in as close to the centre as we could, before we were stopped at the edge of the bomb zone by police roadblocks. The main radio station was playing old songs, Imagine, All You need Is Love, Peace Train, attempting to broadcast some kind of hope over the city. The streets were still covered in glass and office documents still blew everywhere. Strange zones where three windows in a row were fine and the next completely shattered, ash in the shop inside. No one on the streets. Everything closed.

The dank morning we drove to Utoya. The footsteps of Breivik. Wet empty roads. Highways closed. People huddling in the rain; the King, Queen and Crown Prince comforting them. Black clouds. Back to Oslo. A minute’s silence outside the cathedral. It turns into five minutes. Rain fails to fall. Waiting for Breivik to arrive outside the court. Too crowded and risky to allow him to arrive in public. A man hits and screams at a car that tries to get into the car park. Policemen in a conference, admitting that they didn’t react fast enough. They’re not defiant, they apologise, look devasted, say that they will understand if people criticise them, then, in a breaking voice, ask people to remember that they are humans too, not just policemen. They could not believe that anyone in Norway could do such a thing, mistaken in presuming that everyone in the country was as decent as them.

One Hundred Million Porcelain Seeds

Electric Pig — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 01:39:41 +0000

I don’t know what the one hundred million porcelain seeds in Ai Weiwei’s installation are supposed to ‘represent‘. Am I not supposed to think that they should represent something? Is it missing the point; ignorant? I thought they looked pretty nice, even if you can no longer walk on them. I liked looking at a few of the seeds and thinking that some Chinese worker made those in some little studio somewhere. I wonder if they had noodles for lunch, or a sandwich? Do studio workers have the option of a sandwich in China? What’s their standard lunch? How many seeds did they have to make every day? Was it an easy target to achieve? Could they just zone out and make seeds – the equivalent of Excel for an artisan in China? I wonder if the person who made the one in front of me had a family, or was single? Was a man or a woman? Do they drink tea at work? Do they have to make a round when they get up to make one for themselves? Even if there aren’t one hundred million of them, which there probably aren’t, it’s still mind-boggling to think about making them.

Free, large-scale art in London is a good thing.

Carnival 2010

Electric Pig — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:31:20 +0000

These are some photos from this year’s Notting Hill Carnival. It was as fun as ever this year, although as it rained on the Sunday for a (pretty short) period, the Monday was properly rammed, possibly more so than in the past couple of years. I thought it felt a little bit safer than last year, and the only trouble we saw was (surprise, surprise), at the D&B stage. Some young bloke started getting pretty aggressive with a lot of the people nearby him, typically just as we were walking past. One of the MCs onstage managed to stop the music and started screaming at him. She was properly angry, and had a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude about her that would brook no argument. She sounded like an mother whose children had tried it on one too many times. In the end, she could the whole crowd screaming “out, out, out”, at him, until he was manhandled away from the crowd round a corner, out of sight, out of mind. It was a pretty impressive display! These photos are mainly from the roads around All Saints Road and Westbourne Park Road. I shot them again with some Fuji Velvia in the T2. I still like the results, but Carnival isn’t the easiest place to shoot, and it shows. Click them to see extra bigness.

Velvia a Paris

Electric Pig — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:36:03 +0000

A few months back I found an old expired roll of Velvia 100 slide film in the back of my photo drawer. For some reason, I’d never tried slide film in my T2 so thought I might as well give it a go. These are the results. They’re mostly from when Eri & I went to Paris a month or so ago, although a couple are from London. I really like the high contrast feel in these – really works well for Paris. I can imagine that the saturation would be far too strong for a lot of subjects, but it makes for a nice change from the films I’ve been using in the T2 recently. I wish I knew some shops near me which actually had a decent selection of film so I could buy some more – guess it’s going to have to be eBay again, if I can work out how to actually win an auction. Click the photos below for biggerness.

MacLovin’

Electric Pig — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:51:11 +0000

I’ve been getting really fed up with Apple recently. It’s annoying enough that the iPhone has brought so many people like this out of the Apple closet, without the quality control on Apple products dropping faster than a choirboy’s cassock in a Catholic church. Or more accurately, without the quality control on the Apple products I buy disappearing. And, to be honest, those are the only Apple products I really care about.

It was all so easy a few years back. My first Apple laptop, a lovely G4 Powerbook lasted 5 years with only one problem, a ratio I considered perfectly fair. My iPod Photo has lasted six years so far with a perfect performance record (touch wood). So when I decided to buy a new laptop (the Powerbook was still working but had become so slow that using two applications simultaneously became almost impossible), I didn’t think I would need the extra Applecare. The fact that Apple charged £270 odd for it didn’t make it much more appealing. Since this terrible mistake, the metal on the button to open the lid wore away and the disk drive then broke five times within a year, so Apple very fairly replaced the whole computer (for which I was very grateful). After that, the disk drive broke again, the logic board died and had to be replaced, and during fixing this, one of Apple’s geniuses broke the screen which then also needed replacing. For about a year now, the battery has also ceased working, which has pretty much turned the laptop into a desktop, and the disc drives neither plays nor can create DVDs.

Recently the computer hasn’t been sitting flush on my desk. At first I thought that the hot weather we had been having might have warped my desk, but since the cold weather (17 glorious degrees today in mid-August) has returned, it hasn’t got any better. Today I finally got round to turning the computer over to double check the problem. I found the battery looking like the photo above, and like this. It should be noted that this isn’t just slightly warped; the whole top of the battery has solidly swollen open so it cannot be closed, and some weird slime stuff is clearly visible on the inside. I took it into the Mac Store and showed it to a horrified genius with a badge that said, more like an Orwellian command than a name: ‘Will’. After trying to make sure no potential customer say it, he told me that I would have to buy a new one (at £100), at which point I kind of lost it and listed all the problems I had had with the computer and asked him if Mac made anything anymore that lasted longer than the year’s standard guarantee. He assured me that they weren’t designed to fail like that and that most people had a wonderful experience with their MacProducts (which made me feel so much better). He suggested that I book a Genius Bar appointment and told me, ‘don’t worry, we’re on your side’. I deserve a fucking Nobel Peace Prize for not losing it right then and smashing the battery into his perfectly coiffured, hipstermatic face. Nothing could be more annoying to me than an employee of a multi-billion-dollar-profit-making-company telling me that they are on my side while simultaneously shafting me with their products made in Chinese sweat shops so underpaid that the employees are committing suicide rather than come into work. So next week (for there is no appointment sooner), I will have to go in to the Mac store again, when I will no doubt be told that the computer is out of warranty and that I will have to buy a new battery. If the only alternative were anything other than Microsoft, I would be gone. But there isn’t. It’s like being a Labour supporter all your life only to have John Smith die, be replaced by Tony Blair, and then the only alternative is Dave Cameron and Gideon Osborne. And I thought capitalism was about having a choice…

nb: to be fair to ‘Will’ (if that’s his real name), apart from the ‘We’re on your side’ thing, he was a perfectly decent bloke. It’s just that, I’m sorry Will, I don’t like the forced intimacy of shaking hands with a shop-employee.

Summer 2010 Mix

Electric Pig — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:00:44 +0000

I did a new mix. After the last more dubsteppy one, this one’s back to D&B. I’ve really enjoyed D&B recently, particularly the more minimal, musical stuff like this. All the people involved in the Autonomic Podcasts have really pushed the music forward, in a much deeper direction that I’ve been really liking, something that’s reflected in the number of tracks by them in this mix. Download it if that kind of thing’s up your street. Oh and my girlfriend wants everyone to know that the photo on the tracklist is by her (© Uchino Eri)!

Tracklist:

Long Lies: Consequence: Exit Records (EXITCD004)
Trampoline Queen: SKV18: SKV18 Free Download
Converge: June Miller: Horizons Music (HZN037)
Lost Attack: Consequence: Soundcloud Free Download
Nowhere: Despot: Microfunk (MCRFNKFREE002)
Wrong Way: Abstract Elements: Exit Records (EXIT019)
Hydrate (Consequence Remix): DJG: Warm Communications (WARM016D
Porcelain: ASC: Non Plus+ (NONPLUS003)
She Moves Through (ASC Remix): Blu Mar Ten: Blumarten.com Free Download
One: Dan Habarnam: Cylon Records (CYLONUK005)
Marvel: Sabre: Critical Music (CRITLP04S)
Love Hotel: dBridge: Exit Records (EXIT022)
Absent Mind: ASC: Non Plus+ (NONPLUSCD001)
Dreadtone: Consequence: Darkestral Excursions (DARKESTRALEX001)
Down With You: Pearson Sound: Darkestral Galaxicos (DARKESTRALG001C)
Dim Light: dBridge: Exit Records (EXIT022)
8798: Raiden & Khanage: Voodoo Music (VOOMUSIC002)
Watching You: Instra:mental: Non Plus+ (NONPLUS002)
Fade Away SeasonsASC & Consequence: Non Plus+ (NONPLUSCD001)
Phobos: ASC: Non Plus+ (NONPLUS006)
End Credits: Instra:mental: Non Plus+ Ltd (NONPLUSLTD001)

The cover/tracklist can be downloaded here and here.

Shura @ Archway

Electric Pig — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:52:56 +0000

I went to one of my lil’sister’s gigs this week, somewhere in Archway, deepest, darkest Norf London. Shu plays guitar and sampler and sings her own songs, accompanied by a boy with the curliest hair since Keegan’s 70′s mop (been watching too much World Cup recently). She can be found on the web here and here. The gig was good, Shu sung well and was well received I thought, with just some work needing doing on the time she takes with initial looping. I must add that the guy who started off the night, whose name I believe was Craig Ingham, had some of the best patter between songs I have ever heard. Much better than the usual thanks and introduction to the band that we got when I was young…

I wanted to try to take some photos at the gig, partly for Shu’s prospective website, and partly just for photo practice. It turned out to be quite a good venue for photos, as I had a decent sized seat and a little table in front to hold my bag. I found I could just about get away with a couple of shots at 200ISO, but most of the shots are at 400 or 800 ISO. I had better focus with the 50mm at f1.8 than I had had last time I had tried to shoot any shots of one of her gigs, with slightly less blur, but it still wasn’t great. I took far more shots this time though, so there was bound to be some degree of sheer quantity of shots yielding slightly more good ones. There wasn’t really room to move around when the music had actually started though, hence the similar angle for most of them. Sorry about that. There’s some more below. Click to see them bigger.

Form & Function

Electric Pig — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:27:47 +0000

Bored, I finally got round to processing some old photos of the Tokyo International Forum which I had never bothered doing. I guess the International Forum is probably my favourite building in Tokyo. It’s one of those buildings that doesn’t disappoint when you see it for real. The size, acoustics and, (whenever I’ve been) comparative lack of people allow you to sit on one of the benches and appreciate the actual architecture. I haven’t found a similar building in London where the quality of the architecture is matched by the amount of access the public have to saunter around inside. I end up going there pretty much every time I’m in the area, and then end up making some excuse to go here too. The photos below were taken at various times in the past 8 years, with a variety of cameras. Click the photos below to see bigger versions:

Funfair

Electric Pig — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:08:26 +0000

This is the Carter’s Steam Fair in Ravenscourt Park. I remember going there every year as a kid. It’s pretty much the same. The same penny arcade and coconut shy, waltzer and candy floss. They no longer have the spin-dryer ride we all loved. It was always the scariest ride they had. You would stand in a round cylinder against the wall. The cylinder would start to move. It span faster and faster, pressing us back until eventually, the floor would descend leaving us sticking against the wall, legs dangling. We felt like miniature astronauts in g-force training. When it was spinning fast enough, the more daring among us would manoeuvre themselves round so they were hanging upside down, laughing at eachother’s squashed faces upside-down.

There was a story at the time, (inevitably someone’s friend’s sister – probably just an urban legend), that a girl did the same thing, and, when the floor came back up, her hair went down the gap between the floor and the wall and was caught up in the machinery under the floor. The floor and walls kept spinning but the girl was held in place by the hair until it was eventually ripped out. Could this even have been possible, or was it simply made up to give an extra authority to the ‘no handstand’ rule? It seemed worryingly reasonable at the time – the worn paint and chipped wood didn’t exactly scream safety. Even so, we all laughed as we stepped back out into the sunshine at the end of the ride, laughing as we picked the splinters from the wooden wall out of each others’ backs.

It’s no wonder it’s not there any more.

Photo taken at about 6pm, 17.04.2010. Hasselblad 500c/m, Zeiss 85mm Planar, f5.6, Fuji Astia.

The Crackhouse on the Corner

Electric Pig — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:10:50 +0000

This house on the corner of my road used to be my local neighbourhood’s most well-regarded crackhouse.

As far as I have been able to find out, a family lived used to live there, in what I imagine was once a really beautiful house, but the children grew up and moved out, and the old lady that was left died a few years ago. Since then apparently, the family have been arguing over what should happen to the house. It seems some wanted to sell it, others to develop it into apartments, and others to take over it’s possession themselves. Feelings were obviously high, and the family’s dispersal around the world has meant that the process has taken several years.

As the deliberations crept forward, the house began to rot. Soon, windows were smashed, the garden became a local dump from old fridges and cookers, and the front door and corridor were the most accessible urinal for quite some distance. Realizing the suitability of the place for their needs, the local crackheads gradually moved in. You could pick them out with the bent-forward, slightly desperate way they approached the house, and the twitchy, sucked-in way they left it. Their use meant the decomposition of the house accelerated. Rats patrolled the garden and worried the cats. Strange figures lurked in the shadows around the house at night.

At about 7.00 one evening last winter, the little girl in the house between mine and the crackhouse heard noises on the roof above her. She called her Dad, who went outside to see two figures run over their roof and climb back through one of the crackhouse’s windows. In the next morning’s light, he climbed onto the roof and realized that they had been stealing the slate tiles from his roof, and, judging from the amount gone, had been doing it for sometime. I saw him sitting in his garden for a few nights after that, lit by the light coming through the window from his house, armed with a cricket bat, a mug of coffee and a torch. They didn’t come back.

Suddenly about 4 weeks ago, workmen appeared at the house and started the huge task of cleaning the detritus from inside. Displaying great community spirit and environmental sensitivity, theiy proceeded to empty the contents of the house into the garden, and then set it alight. It burnt throughout the day for 2 weeks (they were kind enough to extinguish the fire in the early evening). When they finished this task, they attached a heavy gate and lock system to the front door, boarded up the windows, and left. Looking over the garden wall every now and again, I sometimes see their van parked in the middle of the garden, but they are never around.

Inevitably, the crackheads moved on. Sometimes I see them in the early mornings waiting outside the KFC on Uxbridge Road, gloomy figures from the night, out of place in the morning sunshine.

Photo taken in the weird volcanic-ash sunset, 15.04.2010. Hasselblad 500c/m, Zeiss 85mm Planar, f.11, Fuji PRO400H.